December 8
South Korea's daily COVID-19 cases hit a record high due to the surging infections in the greater Seoul area, the health authorities said Wednesday.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the country reported 7,175 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 489,484.
The daily caseload was sharply up from 4,954 the previous day, topping the previous record high of 5,352 tallied on Dec. 4.
The recent resurgence was attributable to small cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area.
Of the new cases, 2,890 were Seoul residents. The number of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 2,263 and 431, respectively.
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 1,558, or 21.8 percent of the total local transmission.
The number of the Omicron variant infections was 38, including nine imported cases and 29 local transmissions, up two from the prior day.
Thirty-three cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 15,957.
The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 840, up 66 from the previous day.
Sixty-three more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 4,020. The total fatality rate was 0.82 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 42,774,131 people, or 83.3 percent of the total population, and the number of the fully inoculated people was 41,455,846, or 80.7 percent of the population.
Of them, 4,538,521 people or 8.8 percent of the population have received booster shots.
xinhua
